It is in some high voltage power transmission applications necessary to make a mechanical switch permanently go into a certain state. This may for instance be of interest if the switch is protecting an important piece of equipment or an important part of a piece of equipment.
Such a permanent change of switching state may for instance be obtained through the use of explosives. The use of explosives has the advantage of being fast, reliable and insensitive to high current levels.
As an example CN 2720611, DE 2103565 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,848,100 are directed towards the use of explosives in order to permanently break a galvanic connection.
However, in some cases it may be necessary to permanently short-circuit a connection. In this case it may additionally be of interest that the short-circuit being obtained has a low resistance.
In this regard it is known to use explosives in order to cause a projectile to move along a longitudinal axis in order to obtain electric contact in a radial direction for ensuring a short-circuiting. This technique is for instance described in WO 2013/185815 and EP 2073229.
It can be seen that the above described designs involve closing of a switch by explosively accelerating a mass in the axial direction.
It would in view of what has been stated above be of interest to provide an alternative way of using explosives to achieve a short-circuit.
The main challenges of such a solution are:                Safe acceleration and travel of the mass        Minimize the influence of the forces induced by high current        